Imagine my surprise when I found an article on Space.com that was, in effect, a movie review. The article was entertaining, humorous and was written from a scientific perspective:
SPACE.com — Big Apes and Bad Biology
[ . . . ]
Skull Island’s a happening place. Sauropods stampede to a booming death, insect carnivores the size of phone booths writhe out of the swamps, and Kong – stricken by the sight of blonde hair – develops an inappropriate interest in the one woman who’s aboard ship. Eventually, the entrepreneurs who have initiated this less-than-idyllic odyssey capture Kong and take him back to Manhattan as an E-coupon sideshow attraction.
Let me give that a bit of emphasis: these guys find an island filled with living, prehistoric dinosaurs. And they bring back the mammal.
Now some will see this classic cinema tale as a touching love story between two primates who share their affections but only 98% of their genes. A recent opinion piece in the New York Times suggested that this film was motivated by Soviet experiments in the 1920s designed to produce a human-chimpanzee hybrid (in an attempt to discredit religion, while simultaneously offending chimp family values). Then there’s the now-forgotten prewar habit of bringing back wild beasts and natives from distant lands to exhibit as living exotica. As recently as 1931, you could observe caged humans (Africans and Inuit were favorites) on display in Europe.
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Yep, long after slavery was abolished in this country, enlightened Europeans kept people of color in cages – and these days they preach to America about our so-called injustices – but I digress – that’s not the point of the article. I just thought it was yet another good example of Euro-hypocrisy.